


Beyond the Grave

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:50:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The afterlife was a lot like Cornwall, really.</p><p>[rather misleading spoilers for m23.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Grave

**Author's Note:**

> This is 100% complete crackfic, born of the running joke (is it a running joke if I've heard it more than once?) that even though Six to Start has confirmed that there will be more Radio Abel, that doesn't mean that Jack and Eugene will survive m23, and they'll be...broadcasting from beyond the grave. [/title drop]
> 
> So, uh, enjoy.
> 
> There's also a spoiler for the last Chronicles of Narnia book, because it's been sixty years now and I figure it's fair game.

The afterlife was...well, it was a bit like the seaside. Jack hadn't been expecting that -- he hadn't been expecting an afterlife, really, despite his cultural Anglicanism. Perhaps there would've been clouds and white robes, maybe harps...okay, he'd never been expecting the harps, but it definitely wasn't meant to be the seaside.  
  
He was lying on the grass, and not too far in the distance he could see a pebbly beach with white-crested waves breaking onto the stones. It was so British it hurt, really, although it wasn't raining, so that was an upside for wherever he was. The last thing he remembered was being in the recreation room with Eugene: they'd been entertaining the kids as Alice and Amber lent a hand for the preparations for the raid. (Jack and Eugene had got out of it because of Eugene's leg, and taking care of kids was definitely a small price to pay.) They'd just begun to tell the kids the story of the sixth Harry Potter (it was absurd that they still couldn't find that one -- they had at least half a dozen of all the others) when there had been an almighty boom, like there had been the day Runner Five arrived -- a rocket, and then he'd been thrown to the ground, but he didn't remember hitting it...

And now he was here, in a place that looked suspiciously like southern England.

There was a noise to his left, and he rolled over to see Eugene wearing a confused expression, lying within arm's reach of him. "'Gene!" he said, grinning. "It's good you're here, 'cause I reckon being dead without you would be pretty awful. I mean, unless it was like in the last Narnia book, where Susan wasn't in Narnia because she was still alive. I suppose that would be okay." He sat up, feeling the grass beneath his palms, which felt awfully real for somewhere that wasn't. Or...was it real? Trying to make sense of it gave him a headache, so he stopped.

"We're not dead, Jack," Eugene said, sitting up himself and looking out towards the beach. "We're...we wouldn't be talking if we were dead." He didn't sound too sure of himself though -- and then he saw his leg, and he went pale. He had both legs -- there it was, his right leg as if the fall had never happened. "Okay, maybe...maybe we are dead." He pointed his toes, bent his knee and then stood up slowly, as if he was uncertain it would hold his weight. It did, of course, because his leg was as if it had never been injured. Apparently, being dead had its perks.

"I didn't expect the afterlife to look quite so much like Cornwall," Jack said, getting to his feet and pointing to the sea. "You ever been to Cornwall, 'Gene? I don't think I've been since I was little. It's lovely, though -- the weather's always much nicer, and there's the sea, obviously..."

"I didn't expect an afterlife at all," Eugene said, staring at the grass between his toes. They were wearing clothes they had owned before the Apocalypse, but no shoes for some reason. Clearly, nothing here really had to adhere to logic anyway. "When you die, you die. You're dead. It's not like there's anything to keep going or to move on."

"Clearly there is, though. Never too late for a bit of _soul_ -searching, hey?" He elbowed Eugene in the side and grinned, but Eugene didn't appreciate the pun quite as much as he should have. Eugene wasn't taking this very well at all, really. It wasn't so much the being dead thing -- they'd both made peace with that a lot time ago, since the whole zombie apocalypse gig wasn't going away -- but the fact that they were still _somewhere_.

"But...but it doesn't make _sense_. Does this prove the existence of God? Is there just an afterlife, or is there a heaven and a hell? Which one are we in? _Why does it look like Cornwall?_ " He ran a hand through his hair and kicked the grass, which felt exactly like he remembered grass feeling. Which was to say, it felt real.

"I don't know, I know as much as you do. I dunno, I don't think I would've picked Cornwall as the place to be all eternity, but it's not so bad. We could go swimming or something."

"What, and-- Jack, wait, what exactly happened? All I remember is a--"

"A rocket."

"So a rocket hit Abel?"

"Apparently."

Eugene rubbed his eyes, blinking a few times as if expecting things to change. They didn't.

"Alright, then. We're dead, and there's an afterlife, and I have you, at least, and...and the comms shack?" He'd noticed halfway through the sentence, and pointed to the tin shed a few hundred metres away, glinting in the sunlight.

When they reached it, the comms shack was exactly as they'd left it -- there were crisp packets in the corners, a dirty tea mug on the desk, and the headsets had the rainbow and unicorns stickers Jack had put on them one very slow afternoon. They sat in their chairs out of habit, and Jack turned the equipment on. It whirred to life, and he spoke into the microphone, grinning at Eugene as he said, "Well, listeners, I'm not sure how many there are of you here in the afterlife, but we can't be the only ones that died, so...have a song to liven up your post-death experience. I hope it wasn't too painful for you." He fumbled with the iPod, and there in the little shack in whever-the-hell-they-were, the first notes of _Only the Good Die Young_ came out of the speakers.

***

No one had really got used to it yet. People still mentioned the dead, making it halfway through their names before stopping and realising that they wouldn't use the comms shack this afternoon/unsuccessfully help with the electrical wiring/write the next chapter of their novel, and the conversation would grind to a halt. Cleaning up was difficult enough without the constant reminder of the ghosts of people they'd lost, but it had to be done. No one at Abel was a stranger to losing people, but this had been so sudden, there had been so many of them -- half the children were dead, since they had all been in the same place. Jack and Eugene were dead. Maggie was dead. Janine -- Sam had been the one to find Janine, once he'd woken up from knocking himself out as his head hit the desk. He'd not spoken to anyone for three days.

Maxine was the busiest she'd been in months, patching everyone up the best she could. The constant flow of people to the hospital had just started to slow down, and she was taking a minute to have a cup of tea and to not think about anything. She hadn't slept properly since the rocket attack, and she felt so _weary_. Her hand found its way to the radio's 'on' switch from habit, and there was a moment of static before she heard the closing chords of a song and then --

"Good...morning? afternoon? I don't know, actually. The sun's not moved since we got here, so I suppose it's fairly meaningless. Hello, listeners! The weather in the afterlife -- or, at least, this part of it -- is sunny with a bit of cloud, rain is unlikely, and there's a lovely breeze coming off the sea. Um, there's no sign of zombies, so...well. If there are no zombies, I'm really not sure what to talk about. Any ideas, Eugene?"

Before she could hear any more, Maxine turned the radio off, her hands shaking. What the hell was that? Was it a cruel joke, maybe? She stormed over to the comms shack without even finishing her tea, knocking on the door before letting herself in. Sam didn't deserve privacy with the crap he was pulling.

"What the hell was that?" she asked, standing over the comms operator and doing very well at looking utterly terrifying. "That wasn't funny at all."

"What wasn't?" Sam looked genuinely confused, and Maxine's expression softened a little. Perhaps he didn't know what was going on -- which still left the question of who did.

"I thought you'd... I don't know, you'd put on some Robo Radio Abel. Didn't you hear it?"

"No?" he said, his voice rising at the end, sounding uncertain as he flicked a switch and music came out of the speakers. "What did you hear?"

"Jack's voice -- he was talking about the weather in the afterlife, and I thought it must have been some sort of cruel joke. Maybe they had recorded a tape to be played in the event of their death or something. That said, I didn't think they would be _that_ tasteless, but that's the only explanation I can think of."

Sam frowned, scuffing his shoes against the floor. "I don't think they would do that, and if they did, I certainly didn't put it on. I'm the only one here, so no one else could have. You're absolutely sure it was Jack?"

"Absolutely."

They sat in silence as the song ended, and there was a noise like someone was shuffling around paper, and then Eugene's voice. It couldn't have been anyone else's. "It's a good thing our music collection came with us, because we've spent ages collecting all those iPods, CDs...we even have a couple of vinyls that Runner 16 brought back one trip, remember that, Jack?"

"We still haven't been given a way to play those vinyls, though, Eugene, so don't get too excited."

"Shame the shack wasn't upgraded or anything when we...when we died. Our bodies were fixed -- I have two legs again -- but the shack is still tiny as ever. Maybe we could put in a window."

"That's a great plan. Our lamp seems to work, thankfully -- you know, I haven't seen any power lines, so I'm not sure where we're getting the electricity."

"Divine intervention?" said Eugene in a sceptical tone.

"Shush, you." Jack laughed, and continued, "Here's a song, folks."

They got three bars into the song before Sam leant over and turned the radio off. Both of them had been silent while they listened, not quite believing what had just happened. They had buried Jack and Eugene themselves -- side by side, just outside the walls.

"Maybe we should cover the radio in salt and burn it." Sam said at last. At the look he received, he added, "You know, like they do in Supernatural. To get rid of ghosts."

"You aren't serious, are you?" Maxine asked, in a tone she usually reserved for Runner Three's unlikely injuries.

"Of course not," Sam said hurriedly. "It might be worth a try, though."

"Or we could just keep listening. God knows Radio Abel was the highlight of my day when I was having a bad one."

In response, Sam turned the radio back on.

"I was just talking to my man Eugene, and we were wondering who would win in a fight, zombie Hawkeye..."

And even though she couldn't think about it too much or it would all fall apart, and even though it hurt every time she remembered she wouldn't be able to argue with Jack that clearly zombie Hot Lips would smash zombie Hawkeye in a fight, Radio Abel was what she fell asleep to. And they went on.


End file.
